


The Night, the Call

by inthisdive



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-29 23:39:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12095952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthisdive/pseuds/inthisdive
Summary: Toby loses himself sometimes, and Sam finds himself caught in it. Late at night. For raedbard, whom I adore more than I can say.  Published on LiveJournal in 2008.





	The Night, the Call

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raedbard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/gifts).



Toby is encircled by empty shot glasses and his hands are sticky. He lies alone on the couch and counts his breath. Focus. One. Two. It helps, but doesn't help enough; he can feel them slipping away – both of them – falling through his fingers, receding like fog as he loses them. 

Control. Hope. 

They never stay long, but Toby had thought that tonight they belonged to him, that he held composure in his weathered hands and was its master. Toby hates being wrong about that.

The room looks grey, bleak. There is a film over his eyes and, somehow, there is still a dryness in his throat. 

He picks up the phone, and he calls. 

* 

Sam can't tell that Toby has been drinking heavily and is dangling over the cusp to drunk, and that's not just because he's still mostly asleep. It isn't because he's naive, either; Toby is just a better actor than Sam realises. Sam is in bed, pajamas crisp and new. His briefcase is unclasped and open beside him, filling the half-empty bed. 

Something is in the background. Music playing on the radio, he thinks, as he tries to source this awareness of sound, but Sam hasn't heard at least the last eight songs. This one isn't special; this moment isn't special. 

Except, of course, it is. “It's two in the morning,” he tells Toby. 

“It's almost three.”

There it is – _Toby_. Sam has to smile. 

“Where are you?” he asks, knowing Toby can probably hear that smile in his voice.

Toby tells him. Sam goes.

* 

The couch is hard and wet, and Sam, who remembered to dress before leaving the house, lays down his coat before he sits. The smell in the air is sharp; Sam wrinkles his nose. 

“Toby?” 

Toby hasn't spoken once since he appeared at the door, pale and luminous, somehow all there and missing all at once. Sam had, unthinking, reached out a hand to him, but Toby had simply turned and walked into the kitchen. 

“Toby?”

Sam is sitting up straight, and he rests his hands on his knees. He feels so often as he does with Toby; the dunce schoolboy on reprimand. Confused, guilty – even in advance. 

The room is dark, he notices, save for a low-burning lamp. He was shadowed by its light, outlined against the wall, here for no other reason than because Toby had not-asked. As always it had been, and, Sam knows, as it always will be. 

“Toby?” he tries again, patient.

*

Toby had been making coffee in the kitchen. His hands are shaking. His fingers are cold, and, he thinks, too thick. Everything, he realises, seems two inches to the right of his aim; a collage of spilled water and milk demonstrate the point and litter the ground.

As he struggles to prepare the cups, to be calm, the buzzing in his head begins to sound like something. Like his own name, like Sam’s voice. 

It's sounded that way since before Sam arrived, and he isn't drunk enough to lose his vision or depth perception. 

It's something else.

* 

“Sam.” It was, finally, a sound. Gruff and brief, Toby presses a mug of coffee into Sam's hands and, cradling his own, sits beside him. Silent again. 

The couch sags in the centre; their knees touch. 

It seems wrong to Sam – no, inappropriate – to acknowledge the gesture, so Sam just takes a sip and says nothing. 

That's when it happens. 

* 

“Sam.” It's a voice Sam doesn't recognise, an inflection he hasn't registered against Toby's face in his mental database. He tries to dissect it: the voice wants something. It's thick, quiet. 

He looks up, shifts. His thigh finds Toby's and friction explodes between them, warmth on warmth, a hint of _scent_. 

“Toby?”

A hand grips Sam's thigh. Sam leans, tilts; vertigo takes hold, he falls into Toby. Tastes him. He tastes alcohol and, under that, Toby's lips and mouth; something more pleasant than Sam would have guessed. There's heat, too, and moisture.

Sam thinks he might drown, die in this. In him. 

Toby says it again, Sam's name, and he says it against his Sam's lips and into his mouth, swallowing him, and Sam forgets himself; he presses against Toby. He is losing grip, he slips, he holds on. He's forgotten where he's supposed to be anchored and moors himself to Toby. 

It's uneven, but Sam doesn't mind. All he is in this moment is feeling. 

Toby grunts and Sam closes his eyes. He brings his hands up awkwardly, blindly, and feels the stains, warm, on Toby's shirt – under his arms. Sam is silent, suddenly intense, dramatically weightless. 

Toby bends over Sam, and he's pressing against Sam's hip, and Sam falls back and hits his head on the arm of the couch as he stretches. The “ow” that escapes his lips is not intentional. 

But the beautiful part of the moment-breaker is this: it doesn't break. Toby chuckles, reaches down, and unbuckles. He takes Sam's hardness in his mouth, the laughter still a humming in the back of his throat – oh – in the back of his throat. 

The world stops.

* 

It starts again with a gasp, a cry; a red face, closed eyes, bunched fists. A re-birth. It spins slowly at first, uneven until Sam settles back on his axis and catches his breath. He's naked, and slick, and he and Toby are vacuumed together in this space, this hopeless space, this couch dotted with sex and whiskey. 

“Toby?” Sam asks, his voice steadier than his equilibrium.

“Sam,” Toby says, and Sam realises that's the only word he's said all night. 

And then he gets it. All of it. “Toby,” he repeats, and rests his head on his shoulder. 

“Sam.” Toby smiles at him, but Sam is too dazed to smile back. 

Too new. 

*


End file.
